Chiafalo v. Washington

Chiafalo v. Washington, 591 U.S. 578 (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case on the issue of "faithless electors " in the Electoral College stemming from the 2016 United States presidential election . The Court ruled unanimously, by a vote of 9–0, that states have the ability to enforce an elector's pledge in presidential elections. Chiafalo deals with electors who received US$1,000 fines for not voting for the nominees of their party in the state of Washington . The case was originally consolidated with Colorado Department of State v. Baca, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), a similar case based on a challenge to a Colorado law providing for the removal and replacement of an elector who does not vote for the presidential candidate who received the most votes in the state, with the electors claiming they have discretion to vote as they choose under the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution .

On March 10, 2020, Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused herself in the Colorado case due to a prior relationship to a respondent, and the cases were decided separately on July 6, 2020. Baca was a _per curiam _ decision that followed from the unanimous ruling in Chiafalo against the faithless electors and in favor of the state.

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 Faithless electors

  • 1.2 State law

• 2 Case history

  • 2.1 Washington

  • 2.2 Colorado

• 3 Supreme Court

• 4 Impact

• 5 See also

• 6 References

• 7 Further reading

• 8 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chiafalo_v._Washington&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Faithless electors

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chiafalo_v._Washington&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Faithless electors")

Main article: Faithless elector

In the United States Electoral College , faithless electors are those who either cast electoral votes for someone other than the candidate of the party for whom they pledged to vote or who abstain . Faithless electors are comparatively rare because electors are generally chosen among those who are already personally committed to a party and party's candidate. Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have passed laws to prevent faithless electors, but none had been enforced prior to 2016. In 1952, the constitutionality of state pledge laws was brought before the Supreme Court in _Ray v. Blair _, 343 U.S. 214 (1952). The Court ruled in favor of state laws requiring electors to pledge to vote for the winning candidate in order to be certified as electors, as well as removing electors who refuse to pledge. The Court did not rule whether pledges were enforceable. Nevertheless, the Court also wrote:

However, even if such promises of candidates for the electoral college are legally unenforceable because violative of an assumed constitutional freedom of the elector under the Constitution, Art. II, § 1, to vote as he may choose [emphasis added] in the electoral college, it would not follow that the requirement of a pledge in the primary is unconstitutional.

In his dissent, Justice Robert H. Jackson , joined by Justice William O. Douglas , wrote:

No one faithful to our history can deny that the plan originally contemplated what is implicit in its text – that electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation's highest offices.

State law

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chiafalo_v._Washington&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: State law")

For the 2016 election, Washington state law RCW 29A.56.320 required electors, selected by their party, to vote for the candidate of their party during the presidential election, or otherwise be subject to a US$1,000 civil penalty.

Under Colorado law, each presidential elector must vote for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates who received the highest number of votes in Colorado's general election.

Case history

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chiafalo_v._Washington&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: Case history")

Further information: Faithless electors in the 2016 United States presidential election

In the 2016 presidential election , the major-party nominees were Hillary Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine for the Democrats, and Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence for the Republicans. Trump eventually won the election with 304 electoral votes to become the 45th President of the United States . There was a grassroots effort to convince electors to vote their conscience in accordance with Alexander Hamilton 's Federalist Paper No. 68 to try to sway electors to vote for an alternative Republican candidate, even if this were to violate their pledges, to deny Trump a majority in the electoral college and trigger a contingent election in the United States House of Representatives .

While the defection of at least 37 Republican electors was needed to force a contingent election, there were only 2 who did not vote for Donald Trump; most of the faithless votes came from Democratic electors, several of whom also voted for alternative Republican candidates.

Washington

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chiafalo_v._Washington&action=edit&section=5 "Edit section: Washington")

The Democratic ticket of Clinton and Kaine won the popular vote in Washington , thus the slate of twelve Democratic electors were appointed. Four of these electors, who had signed pledges to vote for the Democratic nominee, voted for candidates other than Clinton/Kaine. Per the law, they were each fined. Three of the four electors, Peter Bret Chiafalo, Levi Guerra, and Esther John, challenged the fine as a violation of their constitutional rights, arguing that the state's authority over them as electors ended once they were appointed and they were free to vote as they chose under the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution . At an initial hearing, an administrative law judge upheld the fines, stating he had no jurisdiction to rule on constitutional arguments, only whether the fines were applied in accordance with state law. At the first trial at the [Thurston County](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thur

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